Modell Ing of Farmers ’ Livelihood Decision Making To Understand Their Adaptation Response To Changing Conditions in Southwest Coastal Bangladesh in the

Uncertain socio-economic development, biophysical processes and natural disasters in the Ganges delta in Bangladesh continuously transform the state of the socio-ecological system, which challenges local livelihood opportunities to be sustainable. Farmers living in the polders of delta make decisions on their livelihood in response to the changing state of this system. Planning for appropriate adaptation strategies might be achieved when underlying rules of decision making are well understood by all those involved in science, practice and decision making. This paper aims to improve the understanding of the decision rules of farmers in adapting their livelihood to changing climate and socio-economic conditions, using a simulation model. It presents a stepwise method for integrating cognitive mapping of perceptions and decision rules of farmers into a formal agent-based simulation model. We apply this method in a case study of farmers’ community of southwest coastal region of the Ganges delta, one of the most dynamic and densely populated deltas of the World. Results show that the cognitive mapping can capture the richness of decision making and can inform quantitative model building. The agent based model enables exploring simple decision rules in farmers’ livelihood to changing conditions.